this was one of the most easiest courses i have taken during the last 3 years. It was about various Greek and Roman era's, the artifacts that were found and the info about their way of living and historical events that was deduced from the recovered artifacts. The prof (Michelle George) talked really fast in class and a lot of students had problems in note taking due to that, however we all realized later that note taking for this class was not required. In fact even going to the class was not required because she would post a mid term and a final exam review doc which contained all the testable material. This class is easily 12able given that you are good at memorization. If not, then think twice before taking it because its all about memorization
The break down of the course was as follows:
1)MAP ASSIGNMENT:
this was worth 20%. she gave us maps of various countries and we had to locate ancient greek cities on the maps using google. We had a week to do it but you only need 5-6 hours to do this since the entire assignment is just googling cities and their ancient names
2) MID TERM:
I think the mid term was worth 25%. She posted a review document that contained the material from which the mid term questions were taken hence no note taking was required since she didn't test us on any extra stuff. All questions were directly from the review doc.
The first part of the mid term was multiple choice. In the second part she showed us various pictures on a projector screen and we had to answer the related fill in the blank question given to us on the mid term question sheet. Almost all of the pictures were that of ancient pottery/paintings and the questions were about either the names of the painting/pottery, name their painter or the era when it was made (again these pictures and the info was all in the review doc). The last part consisted of pictures of two ancient architectural structures and we had two label different parts of the given architectural buildings. The great part was that she told us before the mid term, which two buildings we will have to label so these were basically free marks.
I got a 96 on the mid term and i started preparing just two and a half days before the mid term. If memorization is not your strong suit then definitely start a bit early
3) ESSAY:
the essay was worth 20% if i remember correctly. The average on this essay was quite low (in late 60's) probably because majority did it the night before or took it very lightly. The essay itself was not hard. We were given a list of artifacts found from excavation of archeological sites. We had to choose an artifact from the list and write an essay answering the questions given to us about when was it found, description of its physical features , which era it belonged to, history of the artifact etc. Again, this was basically a google essay assignment but make sure you don't leave it for the night before because you will probably make grammatical mistakes and won't be able to structure it properly. I myself did it the night before and got a 75.
4) FINAL EXAM:
A review doc was given for the exam and the questions were straight from it. The format was the exact same as the midterm. If you memorize the review doc you will do well on the exam.